Category Archives: Native Americans

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read. A few days ago Jeanne decided to give me a shot of rare pleasure. She took me to my favorite place in the Kansas City area: A giant Asian grocery store.

As we entered the large vestibule at the entrance I noticed large ceramic pots for sale and the one below caught my eye.

I walked over for a closer look and called to Jeanne. “Look at this!” Pointing with my cane, “These are petroglyphs from the US!”

Meanwhile an Oriental man noticed me from inside and rushed out. “One hunnerd dollars! One hunnerd dollars!” I dragged my attention away from the pot and stared at him. He pointed to another pot. “Fifty dollars! Fifty dollars!”

Then he pointed inside the pot and shouted, “Look!”

So the burning question is, are Asian petroglyphs so similar to Native American petroglyphs as to be indistinguishable from them? These pots seem to be decorated with some symbols definitely not Native American, mixed promiscuously with reproductions of petroglyphs I’ve seen countless times in New Mexico and Arizona, Colorado and Utah.

It’s clear no matter what the answer might be that Asians have gotten the jump, however, on the ceramic petroglyph trade.

If I had someplace to put one of those pots and something I wanted to put in it and $100 lying around with nothing to do I think I’d just buy one of those pots. And maybe haul it over to Zuni or Acoma to give them a looksee. The tribes have been losing business to Asians copying their fetishes, their kachinas, their other crafts for a longish while. Maybe a bit of reversed engineering of petroglyph covered pots would provide a shot in the arm for them.

Aside from the fact nobody’s likely to buy some damned pot covered with petroglyphs.

A significant percentage of US voters believe Ronald Reagan was the best president in US history. Despite Iran/Contra, arms for hostages, and trickle-down economics. History is not the long-suite among high school graduates in the United States.

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.

Yahoo News conducted a poll of +-1400 voters and asked who was the worst president in US history. The results were that 33% believe the guy in the White House now is the worst. 28% believe the guy who was in there before him was the worst.

The pollsters used subtle methods for determining what percentage of the voters believing the guy in there now is the worst did so because he was black. They concluded +-5% simply could not stand the thought of a black man serving in the White House except as a shoe-shine boy.

Which leaves the question among non-racist voters precisely equal: 56% of US voters believe one of the last two US presidents was the worst in US history. 28% Bush, 28% wossname.

All of which should raise some alarming questions in the minds of everyone else. When did they quit teaching children US history in school?

Sheeze! The freaking Civil Freaking WAR was fought during the watch of one US president! Two were impeached! One was responsible for the Trail of Tears and moving the aboriginal tribes east of the Mississippi the-hell anywhere west of the Mississippi and stealing their farms, barns, equipment, animals, crops for white people. Even though those Cherokees and some other tribes were already doing their best to BE white people. Hell, a few years later they even had a Cherokee general commanding troops during the Civil War. Chreeeeeist! They even owned slaves! What the hell do you have to do to be civilized?

Then there’s Lyndon Johnson, faked the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and used it to justify carpet bombing of North Vietnam, had South Vietnam President Diem assassinated by the CIA, and did the Great Society.

There’s John freaking Kennedy, son of a damned bootlegging smuggling NAZI supporter during the pre-WWII years. Responsible for the Bay of Pigs, among other fiascos.

Hells bells, there’s Clinton for Christs sakes. Got a blowjob in the Oval Office. No Jennifer Oneal, her, either. Shot up Ruby Ridge, murdered a couple-score Branch Davidians outside Wacoi, and smuggled huge amounts of coke and crack into Arkansas on CIA aircraft. Got almost impeached because of shady real estate deals he and the little woman were up to their asses in.

These two guys now and just before him are pikers. Except where deficit spending and fruitless military adventures are concerned. These two couldn’t find their asses with flashlights when it comes to real corruption.

A few old guys of the same species sitting around Kerrville, Texas wondering where the world went. Each too different from the others to guess which parts they missed. Old guy the others knew walked up and sat down.

Silver gray hair in a ponytail, 70ish, shorts and sandals with athletic stockings, heavyset. We shook hands and I studied his features. In Texas he looked definitely out-of-place, though he could have been Hispanic throwback gene pool. But something in the features and skin pigment had me suspecting he was a Navajo or Apache. A curiosity because Native Americans aren’t much drawn to Texas as a home.

Finally my puzzlement got the best of me. “Where are you from?”

He grinned at the others, then at me. “I’m Swedish.”

“Yeah, but what TRIBE Swedish?”

Minneconjou Lakota, it turned out. Born in a US Public Health hospital on the Rez in Minnesota. Mama a party woman, no idea who his pappa was. Reared by his grandma, then sent off to Indian School. Learned to be a welder and pipe-fitter.

By 1970-or-so he was up in Alaska on the North Slope a few years building the first Alaskan pipeline across the permafrost. Had a few stories to tell about that, then all of us began picking his mind for all manner of details. “How deep did they have to go setting the pilings holding up those pipe joints?” “How were you housed?” And so on.

Turned out all the oil from that field was shipped directly to Japan. US refineries weren’t tuned to that sort of crude. But the fields are still producing.

Guy has a tribal census number, but never went back to live on the Rez, but visited his grandma there until she died. Brought tears to his eyes thinking about her. Never used the free health-care/dental-care for life benefit available to him because of the tribal census number US Public Health Service offers.

“I worked hard all my life and settled here. Paid my own way every step along. Making a lifetime job of being an Indian didn’t appeal to me much. When they quit shooting us they tried to offer that as the next best thing.

“They’re still trying, got all those liberal white people to worship blanket Indians. Better than getting shot, but not as good as kicking the whole damned mess.” He shook his head. “Damned white people and their congratulations for being victims will finish off all the ones left.”

Nice meeting him. I hope I see him again before I head for the tall timber. Being born into a trap doesn’t mean there’s no escaping it, I reckons.

Europeans thought they were getting a fairly good deal when the Indians snookered them into paying a bunch of beads and mirrors for Manhattan. As historian John Wayne once pointed out, “The Indians were selfishly hoarding the whole continent.” They were in a position to demand unreasonable prices for real estate.

Later on they demanded even higher prices for the land east of the Mississippi River and so on, always pretending they didn’t want to sell. Cheating white men and the government every time they turned around. The Black Hills. The Rocky Mountains. Florida. Wyoming, Montana, Oregon, Washington. New Mexico, Arizona, Texas. Those aboriginals were shrewd businessmen, turning white people every way but loose. Nevada. Utah. Kansas, Missouri, Michigan, Wisconsin, wheeling and dealing every step of the way.

Worse than a bunch of Chinamen. Those Indians were taking the long view. What they wanted was casinos. Tricking white men into giving them choice spots along the highways where they could open up gambling joints. Trinket shops. Clay pots.

And they got it, too. They still have some nice real estate up in the Dakotas, down in Oklahoma, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Colorado and other places. And some of that land has oil, coal, natural gas and other things white people need to fire up the hair dryers, air conditioners and clothes dryers mornings.

It’s time for white people to realize we’ve been had. There are plenty of big power companies, mining companies, real estate developers and other white people who’d love to have that land if they could get it for a reasonable price. Pay for it in slot machine tokens, maybe, or table chips.

Time to cut off all that free health care and commodity cheese, break up those reservations right down to the pavement on the casino parking lots. It’s time for white people to quit getting had by Indians. Those corporations would gladly keep them from selfishly hoarding all the stuff nobody knew was there when the original deals were made to let them stay on that land.

And after all, we’re all Native Americans now. If we’re not, what the hell are we?

When the Mexicans were selfishly hoarding the whole southwest US we had to shoot a lot of them before they’d give us a reasonable price. How the hell are we going to stop all those illegal aliens from Mexico sneaking into the land we took away from them if we keep getting had by other Native Americans?

We need to send some tanks and drones and helicopters to take care of our problems right here at home before we go off to places like Iraq and Afghanistan. There’s nothing on those reservations and in those casinos a few thousand mercenaries and enough explosives won’t cure.

The Visionary President Ronald Reagan wanted to give all the National Forests, National Parks and Bureau of Land Management lands to the real estate developers, mining and oil companies. But he didn’t go far enough and it serves him right he’s remembered as a failed lunatic. He had the Army and he had maps of the US. If he didn’t know where the reservations were he could have asked the Bureau of Indian Affairs. White people could have finally gotten a good deal on something.

I was thinking last night before I dozed off about what TV, movies and fiction have done for us that reality couldn’t. I concluded it all boils down to mythology and self definition. An attempt to bring little guys into a larger picture where, in fact, they don’t exist.

Consider this: Can you name a single person involved in the American Revolution below the rank of Colonel other than Paul Revere? Anyone between then and the War of 1812?

From then until the Mexican War you might recall Nat Turner and his brief slave rebellion, or Davy Crockett, Travis, Sam Houston, et al. The mountain men and the fur traders. Meriwether Lewis and Clark, the Kit Carsons, Bridgers, the Coulters and Joe Meeks. The wild and wooly.

And all the names from the lower paygrades you might recall from the Mexican War are there because they were colonels and higher during the Civil War.

Follow it right on through from then until the Wars and whatever else is happening today. Where the hell are the lower-paygrade heroes?

Well, the fact is, they were out there at the time. They were the outlaws, the killers, the people most successful at taking what didn’t belong to them away from the people it belonged to. The James Gang, the Daltons, Butch and Sundance, Billy the wossname, Kid, the Youngers. Buffalo Bill, wiping a species off the face of the continent so’s the trains wouldn’t be troubled by them and cow men could use the land for cows. Masterson, the Earps, Hickok. Steely-eyed killers.

The US needed the genre fiction, the film industry and television to clean up history. The country needed common people out there getting massacred by Apache, Lakota, Comanche, people with names. People below the rank of colonel with names that weren’t John Jacob Astor and weren’t just getting filthy rich and powerful from it all.

So you want the heroes of the west today? Well, there’s John Wayne. Henry Fonda. Steve McQueen. Jeff Chandler on the generic Indian side. Burt Lancaster. Gary Cooper.

All of whom also, by coincidence, became the heroes of all the other wars the US fought. Became the common men of history where none existed before. Winning the west from the people who owned it, whupping the Germans and Japanese, the Vietcong and NVA, the Chinese and North Koreans.

All those heroes, frequently below the paygrade of colonel, helping us to understand our great heritage. Because, after all, our heroes define us in ways we’d be too modest to define ourselves. Most of us ain’t all that successful at taking shit that doesn’t belong to us, individually.

At least those of us who never got higher than the rank of major. The aristocratic dynasties went to Washington but the heroes all came out of Hollywood.

Bringing civilization to Native Americans was never easy. Almost every step of the way the tribes selfishly hoarded the lands they depended upon, frequently resorting to violence when whites who needed the land for farming, ranching and mining tried to run them off.

One example was the Modocs in northern California, 1852. The US suddenly owned the land, having disproved the false claims by Mexico of ownership by invading them and killing as many as they could catch. But the Modocs were spoiled by being owned by Mexico, being mostly left alone. When whites came into the Tule Lake area the Modoc slaughtered 38 innocent people.

Ben Wright and a group of miners from Yreka, California attempted to peacefully resolve the situation by having a feast for the tribe, but almost to a person the Modoc unreasonably refused to eat the poisoned food.

Wright and the miners were forced to fire into the mass of tribal members, which allowed a third of them to escape. That failure led to decades more of Modoc attempts to halt the march of civilization and disputing rightful white claims to the land.

Not until 1873, after seven months of hard fighting and the loss of many innocent white lives were the Modoc finally subdued permanently and the leaders hanged.

A microcosm of the history of the western US where flawed and improper leadership and planning resulted in the needless loss of innocent white lives.